On the tube from the land of the Tube: The Curious Gardeners

As we hunker down to face the, oh, six months or so where nothing will be growing outside anymore, our thoughts turn to what will be our gardening surrogates: books, catalogs, and yes, even TV. A Gardener's Diary on the HGTV channel is the one gardening show I watch religiously, even during the growing season. (Note to HGTV: the world [er, my world] is crying for a weekend marathon of A Gardener's Diary--trust me on this. Note to production company for A Gardener's Diary: Full-season DVDs, please, as fast as you can press them.) If you linger long enough after A Gardener's Diary has ended, you'll catch the next show on the HGTV lineup these days, a BBC import called "The Curious Gardeners". It's a hoot. The show opens with a visual montage of the two hosts and their jaunty convertible, which (the montage, that is) looks like it owes a lot to The Cars' "You Might Think" music video, backed by music that sounds much like the Emma Peel ("m. appeal") era Avengers theme, if it were used in a burlesque show. (Hmm. Second use of "burlesque" [now, third] in this blog. What wacky search string referrals lie ahead?) The show follows garden designers Guy Cooper and Gordon Taylor as they tool around the United Kingdom to visit gardens and talk gardening. Cooper and Taylor are a long-time couple, and their chemistry and personalities entertain, all while the viewer stares at the lush British countryside setting and asks, "How can anything possibly be that green?" The BBC site linked above has good backstory on the show and the hosts. A very heartening tidbit: both Cooper and Taylor were in their late thirties when they started gardening (in the early 1970's), and now these "late bloomers" can look back on accomplished careers in garden design and garden writing (as well as the TV bit). For role models, I'll take "Guy and Gordon" over "Grandma Moses" any day.